by Chris Capps
The water was icy cold as he dove in.
Even if he did win, he wondered what it would be like to emerge from that island a hundred thousand times, each one subjectively occurring a few seconds from now. This was what it would feel like for his duplicates, each one exactly him in every way.
They would awaken and then appear like him with every memory perfectly intact. This moment, the one that unfolded in his mind as he swam with arms splashing over arms, gasping for breath, might be the last normal memory a whole legion of reincarnations would have. And as he paused in the water, trying to think of something to comfort himself on the long journey ahead, he saw how far he was from the opposite shore. But all he could think about was killing the Icarin and saving Molly.
***
"Sherriff," Jessica said, twisting on the floor to prop herself up on her elbows, "This isn't you."
"I know," Rind said as he backed out of the front door. He walked to the trunk of the car, gun still trained into the small duplex at 720 Flamingo road. Jessica lifted herself to a crouch, hand still clinging to her side in pain. From the trunk Sherriff Rind pulled the gas can. One hand was wrapped around the rifle and bracing it against his hip toward Jessica. He held it up with his hand, shaking it from side to side where a liter of gasoline still sloshed around at the bottom. He called back in, "I always keep one of these in the car, just in case."
Jessica's heart froze as realization set in. He briskly walked back to the front door, still holding the shotgun toward her as she rose to her feet. He was shaking his head, "No, you're not going anywhere."
He poured a little bit of gasoline across the entrance to the house, letting it soak into the small rug, the fumes quickly fouling the air in the room. Jessica stood. The only weight she could feel on her was the pistol at her hip, already unbuttoned and ready to be flipped out to fire like a quick draw cowboy. But Jessica had never shot anyone. And she had certainly never thought about shooting someone she knew like the Sherriff. With a thin droplet trail of gasoline pouring from the nozzle behind him, he walked across the wet carpet toward her, sloshing and splashing bits of fuel as he went. He dropped the can in front of her and nodded at it, "Pick it up."
She leaned down and picked up the small red can, her hands already making contact with the fuel drizzling down the sides of the old cap, and lifted it up in front of her.
"You don't have to do this," Jessica said.
"I'm not doing it," Rind said as he gripped the shotgun, pressing the barrel against her knee, "You are. Pour it over your head.”
Jessica hesitated, holding the gas can unsteadily,
"You said yourself the man on the hill wasn't you," Jessica said, "That was something else. A thing more than a man."
"Open your eyes, Jessica," the Sherriff said as he reached out and snatched the can from her shaking hands, "Whose life do you think flashed before that thing's eyes when they lit him on fire?"
"It wasn't you," Jessica said.
"They're all me," the Sherriff said, his rage weeping out, bleeding from an invisible wound inside him. He was solemn now, "That face was mine, that mind was mine." He shook his head, looked like he was about to say something else, but just shook his head. Before he lifted the can over her head, he said, "Close your eyes, Jessica."
"You want to see it," Jessica said, "You need to understand what happens to someone while they're burning."
"I already saw it," Rind said, "The morning you showed up to my body on the hill I was there. She forced me onto my knees and covered my mouth. And she made me watch the whole thing. We watched all the way up until we heard sirens. And then she dragged me back into the woods."
"Clayton, please. We've worked together a long time. We're friends. You're not a murderer."
"We're all murderers," Rind said.
The can tipped over, spilling onto her hair and running down her body in long vaporous trails. She clenched her eyes shut, but tiny droplets still spilled into them and burned her. Instinctively she grimaced and ran her knuckles up against her eyes. But that didn't help. The gas was everywhere, drenching her completely. It was running down her, past her, onto the carpet below where it soaked in like a sponge, mingled with the water overflowing from the bathtub. She was shivering now, cold. Breathing made her light headed, gave her a headache.
"Paul," a voice said from the front door.
The Sherriff whirled around, shotgun in hand. Clayton Sugarhill was standing in the doorway, holding the old shotgun Rind had taught him to shoot years ago. He had it up against his shoulder, and he was pointing it directly at the Sherriff's head.
"Mayor!" Jessica called out blindly, her hand taking that moment to pull the pistol from her side, "Rind's got a gun!"
Rind turned sideways, looking between them both. Jessica had the pistol out, waving it uneasily with her eyes clenched shut. And at the other end of the room the fat corrupt mayor was standing, holding an old shotgun that hadn't fired in years. The Sherriff couldn't help it as he stared between them. He laughed,
“I thought you would have turned tail already.”
“It’s not like that, Paul,” Sugarhill said, nodding as he motioned behind him with a thick hand, “We owe these people.”
Paul Rind was chewing the side of his cheek, twisting his lips into a scowl. He said,
"Do you honestly think you two could have protected this town?"
"Rind, you're outgunned,” Sugarhill said, “No matter what you do, one of us will take you down."
"Which one?" Rind asked, motioning with his thumb over his shoulder, "The blinded girl covered in gasoline? Jessica you know if you pull that trigger the muzzle flash will light you up like a roman candle." He turned back to Sugarhill, raising the shotgun steadily with one hand, his voice one of comfortable cynicism, "Or maybe my best friend. That shotgun still work, chief? I could sit down right now and sleep like a baby. You two aren't in any shape to shoot me."
"Paul," Sugarhill said, "You've only got two friends in this world right now. You don't need to-"
An explosion sounded from Paul Rind's shotgun, slamming a thick slug into the solar plexus of mayor Sugarhill's chest. The slug passed into Clayton, sending a ripple of kinetic force out through the mayor's internal organs, disrupting tissue and ripping a hole deep into him.
Sugarhill slammed back against the wall hard, flailing for a second to brace himself against the windowsill, but he slid sideways. Sugarhill didn't bleed for long as his eyes stared at the carpet glittering with glass before everything went black for him. His heart stopped almost immediately.
Rind breathed, turning the back of his hand over his brow and clenched his teeth, his fingertips gripping the wooden stock of the shotgun.
"Clayton," Rind said from between those teeth, "My god, Clayton I think I'm losing it. Something's twisted off inside me."
Rind's body felt very heavy. He leaned down, feeling his hand press against Sugarhill's old sprawled mattress and sat down, hearing the creak of the springs in it strain against his suddenly tremendous weight. He propped the shotgun up against his shoulder and leaned forward, his hands running up over his bald head. Tears flowed freely. Jessica stood, growing weaker by the minute as the fumes of gasoline filled her lungs. She was drifting into an automatic sort of existence, pulling back in her own mind away from that small living room on Flamingo Road.
That's what Rosario saw when he walked up to the open front door. He had been walking nearby, having passed the old house already as he tried to remember which of the identical buildings it was. And when he heard the shot and saw Jessica's car, he stopped.
As he approached the house he saw Sugarhill's expensive leather shoes draped across the front door. But as he got closer, and his eyes adjusted to the dim light filtering into the room from the broken window, he saw Rind sitting on the bed and Jessica standing against the wall breathing heavily with her eyes clenched shut.
He walked up, doctor's bag in hand and stepped into the room, but he didn't look down at Rosa
rio. The sheriff had saliva bubbling at his lips as he too clenched his eyes shut, sobbing gently to himself.
No one seemed to notice the doctor, and he quietly leaned down to touch Sugarhill's throat. The mayor's pulse didn't move under his fingertips. His life had been extinguished forever.
When he looked back up, Rind was staring down at him, his face strained and red. He watched Rosario rise slowly and sniff the fumes of gasoline in the room. It didn't take much to figure out why Jessica was clenching her eyes shut. If he didn't get her cleaned up, she would pass out soon. She wobbled uneasily on her feet, gulping at the air as Rind bored holes into Rosario with his eyes. And the sheriff asked,
"Is he dead?"
"No," Rosario said, setting his doctor's bag on a nearby table, "He's still alive."
It was a lie, but one Rosario needed to tell. And one Rind needed to believe.
"Help him," Rind said breathing through clenched teeth, "Bring him back."
Maybe it was the smell of gasoline, maybe it was the shock of seeing the mayor dead. A numbness was passing over Rosario as he nodded once and unclipped the top to his doctor's bag. Inside, he watched the .38 tangled in his stethoscope. It rested between empty vials and cluttered tools. Rosario looked back at Jessica, watching her lose her balance and lean heavily against the wall. She was hyperventilating from her mouth now, coughing once.
"I'm more worried about Jessica right now," Rosario said, loading his tone as he directed his voice at her, "You could save her with some water. She's slowly asphyxiating on those fumes."
"Save Sugarhill," Rosario said, hefting the shotgun from his shoulder and pointing it down at the doctor. He ejected an empty shell from the weapon, sending it cascading onto the carpet before screaming, "Bring me back my friend!"
Even in the throes of her strange delirium, Jessica knew that Rind had completely lost what had been left of his mind in that rage. Her only chance was to take this moment to get to the bathroom. With Rind's voice pointed away from her over at the doctor, she stumbled into the kitchen.
The bathroom was right next to it.
Her legs were wobbling, weakening with each passing step. Soon she had reached the doorway to the bathroom. Water had collected on the floor in a large puddle, which slid under her shoes as she stumbled forward. The bathtub was still running, still overflowing, and she spilled into it. Her mind was reeling, distant, trying to hold on to consciousness as desperately as her fading hands could.
"You've got a duty to protect your deputies," Rosario said, his hand slowly descending into the doctor's bag, "Jessica's in a lot of trouble right now."
"Yeah."
Rind rushed forward and smashed the butt of the shotgun onto the old doctor's head. He grunted, clattering to the floor and grabbing for his doctor's bag. That's when the .38 came tumbling out onto the floor.
At first, Rosario thought Rind might miss it as it clattered out with the rest of his medical equipment, but as he looked up at the Sherriff, he could see a quiet betrayal unfolding on his face.
He nodded.
Even the doctor. Even the doctor has betrayed me. With the resolve of an executioner's axe, he pointed the shotgun at Rosario's face.
Three shots popped at the back of the room, spinning Rind like a bent tricycle wheel. His hand was on his chest, the pulp of three exit wounds spilling blood between his fingers. His other hand clenched shut in shock, pulling the trigger and blasting the shotgun into the carpet at his feet.
He looked up, swallowing hard and coughing a string of blood as it filled his lungs. Jessica was standing at the back of the room, leaning heavily on the wall, soaked to the bone and shivering.
"In the back, Jessica?" he said between wet and terrified gasps, "In the back?"
He leaned forward hard as the shotgun clattered from his hand, dropping him onto the foot of the bed. As he rolled up to the pillow, gasping and coughing red tar from his lungs, he laid face down, staring at the white sheeted landscape in front of him slowly fog over and vanish. He could feel a hand on his shoulder, rubbing it gently with long traitor's fingers.
"Go to sleep, Sherriff," Jessica said tenderly, squeezing his shoulder, and running her fingertips over his bald head, "This is just a bad dream."
"See you," Rind said as he coughed a long black string onto his pillow, "See you in the morning."
His eyes dilated as he saw a wave of darkness, and he went to it easily. Jessica pulled the melted star from her pocket and set it on the pillow next to him.
"Until we meet again," she said rising. Then, turning back to Rosario, she said, "Is the mayor..."
"He's dead," Rosario said, "Rind shot him."
"Grab your bag. We're going to the radio station."
"You've just breathed in a lot of fumes," Rosario said eyeing her uneasily, "How about we take a minute first?"
"You drive," she said tossing over her keys, "You know how, right?"
***
Felix's arms were growing tired as he swam toward the island. It was further than he had thought. The fog that had only hinted at a distant hill topped with trees seemed just as distant now as when he had first splashed into the lake. He paused, floating for a moment on his back to stare up into the bizarre white void above him. The water in his ears occasionally dipped and swelled, alternating between the deafening rumble of the water beneath him and the open air lapping waves gently around his ears. He turned back onto his stomach and resumed swimming.
When he finally reached the edge of the island, he saw the canoe resting there, moored up on the land with its back half bobbing up and down. He stood up in the water when he reached the shore, slogging up until it was at his knees. And then he paused, realizing he would soon be facing the artifice of this strange place, realizing he was about to be dragged kicking and screaming into a strange immortality. He stepped up, his wet bare feet pressing into the mud and leaving tracks, following the Icarin's Molly shaped shoes up onto the green grass.
It was quiet here. Much quieter than he had originally imagined. The wind howled between the trunks of two trees, and Felix walked up and examined a pair of thick charred circles burned into each of them. Their gnarled roots and tangled branches stretched unnaturally from the soil and the sky toward him as still as a scarecrow, and he saw that the black leaves bowing the branches down, weighting them were not leaves at all. They were birds. They watched him, none making a sound as he stumbled up further into the island.
In the near invisible distance of the fog, he could see a structure. It was nearly as tall as a man, perfectly round white stones plastered together and held in place with unidentified cement. But as he drew nearer to it, he saw that the stones had blackened eyes and broken grinning teeth. For a moment he tried to count the skulls making up one side of this unfinished building, but he couldn't. There were hundreds. Maybe thousands. As he passed by it, he caught sight of words painted across the whitened face of a peeled tree. The letters were wild, but precise, all of them in capital ink.
ALL FLESH IS GRASS.
CUT OFF THE HEAD OF MR. HADES
Felix wondered what it meant as he passed by it. Arranged around the base of the tree was a pile of glasses, each of them broken in precisely the same place. A tapestry of wrist watches were strapped one to the other around the tree, each one ticking with a different time set on them. Felix reached down to the pill bottles and checked the label on it.
Diazepam. Prescribed to a Mr. Hades by a doctor whose signature Felix couldn't read.
He pocketed the bottle, stepping further up onto the island where he could see a helicopter sitting next to another one that had been partially disassembled. He quickly ran over to it, his feet kicking up a thin cloud of ivory dust. Beneath the helicopter, poured over the damp earth was a thick stream of white, arranged in the shape of an H with a circle around it. Inside the helicopter Felix saw Chance Cooper.
A slit in his throat had long since dried, spilling blood across the front of his jacket and onto his chest. The other ha
nd of his was bound in rigor mortis, clasping the collective of the helicopter. Felix looked away almost immediately, staring instead back down at the tracks in front of him in the damp soil. There was a shape stumbling, feeling the trees with long fingered hands.
"Hey!" Felix called out. The shape seemed to look at him, but then vanished as a particularly heavy fog rolled in, making it impossible to see. Felix ran toward the shape, realizing that it didn't have the same gait or run as the Icarin or any of the Mollys he had seen before.
As he reached the spot the figure had been standing in, however, he realized he was in sight of something else. The old cracked and yet strangely familiar voice of the Icarin was spilling from a distant hill, singing a song of nonsense.
His foot nudged against something that rolled away for a bit, before rocking back and forth at his feet. It was a white mask, one of the masks the first Molly had been wearing at the meeting. Next to it was the same knife she had produced from her pocket. Felix took the knife, picking it up. It was thin enough for him to fit in the front of his belt safely without worrying that it might fall out.
He kept his hand on the knife as he walked up the hill, the wind now swirling all around him, blowing his hair back and knocking dust into his eyes. The hill was a gentle slope, covered with long green tufts of healthy grass. He could see the shape ahead, its silhouette turning to look back at him as he ascended to meet her. She was wearing one of the hard white plastic masks now, eyeholes looking in on cracked and dirty eyes.
The Icarin reached down to waist height, her fingertips tapping the cover of that thick leather bound red book.
"You realize what you've done," she said as the wind picked up her hair and danced with it, "You'll come back now."